Careless People - Sarah Wyn-Williams

Did Facebook have some promise of being a force for good in the world, yes it probably did. But here Sarah Wynn-Williams shows that they were just lucky to be in the right place with a decent idea at the right time. The brass at Facebook are terrible managers, who merely stumble between bad ideas but then have enough money to push them through or to keep going despite their bad ideas.

They had internal reports showing how bad Myanmar was, but it wasn't a big enough country to worry about so thousands died based on misinformation spreading on the platform. Then Facebook lied to the United Nations investigation saying they didn't track hate speech, while the author saw a report saying exactly how they tracked it in Myanmar specifically.

If you thought those in charge of Facebook were bad people, this solidifies the point. They're out for money, and your life and your country don't matter to them as long as they continue to grow and raise their own profile.

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- watching Facebook happen was less Machiavelli and more like watching a 14 year old explore the ends of their power with too much money to spend. Pg 6

- yeah [[Mark Zuckerberg]] seems like a grumpy child with his meeting with the Prime Minister of [[New Zealand]] or like he didn't have time for such worthless meetings. Pg 38 - 40
- like an entitled child who never had to do things he didn't feel were important

> Effort, productivity, and sacrifice of everything else in life are valorized and fetishized. Pg 48
- and the author feels pushed into sleeping between 0100 and 0500 and working the entire rest of the time to try and keep up with her boss Marne and the workload she's given


- years later [[Tags/Sheryl Sandberg]] says the crushing hours is intentional so that no one has spare time and they don't have to hire more people. Pg 49
- so your whole world is your job

- it doesn't matter what the policy team debates or decides [[Tags/Sheryl Sandberg]] can meet an old friend then change company direction on a whim base on some advice they give her. Pg 56,57
- this specifically speaks to the drive towards organ donation she wanted
- they sound like bad managers who just lucked into a growing product. They not good at their job just lucky to be in the right spot at the right time. They take their luck as a sign that they know what they're doing
- then [[Tags/Sheryl Sandberg]] throws a subordinate (the author) under the bus for her pet project and [[Mark Zuckerberg]] gets pissed at the worker while Sheryl sits out conveniently on a flight when she told her subordinate to send the email so Sheryl can sit the fight out. What's worse is they blames the plane, a private plane with other staffers who are sending emails while Sheryl says she can't.

- even when you told Facebook not to sync your contacts they'd do it as soon as you opened Facebook Messenger without asking. Pg 62
- this was done by Javier Olivan's team for global growth so they could hit their growth numbers

- when [[Tags/Sheryl Sandberg]]'s book Lean In - Sheryl Sandberg launches the ladies of the office are expected to show up at every book launch and do menial tasks to help the book launch go well. These things are outside they're job as they're not employed by Sheryl but by Facebook. These are the same tasks that Sheryl says women shouldn't be doing in her book. Pg 85
- the author says there is always a thin line between Facebook work and work purely for Sheryl's benefit, like getting her nanny a Visa so they can have a vacation in [[New Zealand]]

- the real Lean In - Sheryl Sandberg is to hire a nanny and never talk about having a child at work. Even if the child was accidentally left alone by your nanny and emergency services had to break in to your house. Pg 103
- the author's nanny went out the door which locked on her and she didn't have a key on her, and her phone was in the apartment
- you're not to even acknowledge you're a parent. Just be an employee all the time in service to the company
- see Of Boys and Men - Richard V Reeves > ^a41b5b where work is geared towards a parent that has no responsibilities but work and never mentions outside of work stuff
- work as a [[families|family]] is almost never good for [[employee]]. They ask for long hours, less pay and if you push back you're not a "family" player. Pg 88, 89
- but of course the job won't take care of you if you're sick and can't work. Then you're on your own.

- so with an arrest warrant out for [[Mark Zuckerberg]] and [[Tags/Sheryl Sandberg]] in [[South Korea]] they look for someone to go there and see if the government is serious about arresting a Facebook employee. As if the "body" to arrest is merely something you own that can be expended to benefit the company. The author is sent. Pg 114-116

- Too Big to Fail - Andrew Ross Sorkin Pg 154
- An account of the decisions that led to the 2008 financial crisis

- really you have to hide the fact that you have children from the Facebook brass. They just want you devoted to the job and them personally. Pg 171
- despite what they say publicly about supporting family and that family is important for their employees

- Facebook's Internet.org project lacked moderation or security features found on the regular web and regular Facebook experience. It was planned to entrench the divide between the have and have nots. Also it was only Facebook and government approved apps, making government control of information easy. Pg 203
- Internet.org was renamed to Free Basics in 2015 because it wasn't the whole internet

- [[Tags/Sheryl Sandberg]] is excited that terrorism acts and their threats are putting talk of privacy and [[encryption]] on hold. From [[Davos]] 2 months after an attack in [[Paris]] that killed 130 people at [[Bataclan Theater]] Pg 216
- governments want Facebook to collect data and share it with them. Data makes Facebook money so they're happy to be given a license to collect more of it by governments

- [[Tags/Sheryl Sandberg]] invites the author to sleep in her bed on the plane back from [[Davos]]. Almost insists and is annoyed that the order is refused. She's not offering her bed, she asking the author to sleep in the bed with her. Pg 217-219
- as if it's a teenage sleepover among friends
- if this was a man it would be an appalling offer and it's really the same if it's a woman with power over you
- and we find out later this type of stuff is happening from men, and it's getting swept under the rug despite what Sheryl says publicly about how we should treat sexual abuse at work

- the author is given the impression that Facebook isn't worried about [[Donald Trump]]'s misinformation campaign's because thy sell ads which make Facebook money. Pg 250, 251
- this is for the 2016 election
- plus they figure [[Hillary Clinton]] will win anyway so lets just take [[Donald Trump]]'s money. This assumption aged like milk

- Evidently everyone knows you must praise [[Tags/Sheryl Sandberg]]'s every word about [[Davos]] or suffer her wrath and be frozen out of everything at work. Pg 293
- but many of those same people have a group [[WhatsApp]] complaining about her behind her back and how fake her advice and talking points about women are.

- like any big company Facebook talks about supporting women but doesn't take sexual harassment accusations seriously, even when witnessed by other employees. If they like the abuser they get the investigation swept under the rug. Pg 300

- I do like [[Tags/Sheryl Sandberg]]'s idea that if a company has to keep saying something like "we don't have a hierarchy" they definitely do have a hierarchy and it's important. If they keep saying they "respect women" and "take sexual harassment allegations seriously" they definitely have a problem with sexual harassment that they're not going to do much about. Pg 300

- the author specifically is targeted for reporting the sexual harassment of her boss Joel and given new assignments which are effectively a demotion. Pg 301, 302

- China is a big enough market that Facebook is willing to locate their servers in country with a partner the Chinese Government controls even though they've told other governments in the past they'd never do this under any circumstances. Pg 310
- it's about money. China is a big enough market that they see dollar signs and they can sell their principles

- so Colin Stretch lies to a [[Senate Comitte]] investigation about direct pressure from China on Guo Wengui's Facebook suspension. He puts up a word salad to say nothing to a direct question, when the truth is China did specifically point to the account as problematic if Facebook wanted into the country and Facebook took action against the activist. Pg 325, 326

- Facebook is operating illegally in China on so many levels and just figures it is big enough to work it out later. Pg 330-332
- but China isn't like other governments, they don't care how big your company is or what it can offer, they care that you do what they want

- Facebook targets ads to 13 year old girls who delete selfies so they can be sold beauty products while they feel vulnerable. Pg 335

- Oh yeah the Facebook [[Myanmar]] disaster where they really just don't care enough while people are dying due to [[viral]] misinformation being spread on the platform that gets people killed. Pg 347-350
- the contract that speaks Burmese can't be reached, then doesn't have their laptop while people on the ground are being killed so Facebook can't verify and remove the inciting [[hate speech]]

- when asked for data on [[hate speech]] related to [[Myanmar]] by the [[United Nations]], Facebook said they didn't track that data. Of course they had an internal report showing hate speech stats but it would make them look bad so they don't share it. Pg 359
- a report the author saw in her role as in charge of Asian countries

- sure [[Tags/Sheryl Sandberg]] says zero tolerance on sexual harassment and sexual assault is what we should do at work, but the author has repeatedly reported both about Joel and nothing has been done while the author has to leave her job to get away from it. Pg 365-368
- and when she finally forces an investigation they close it without seeing her documentation after talking with Joel only. Then a few months later they fire her for not expanding her team fast enough, but her boss Joel blocked all the hiring she wanted to do after the investigation started